Chagas disease, also known as American trypanosomiasis, is a parasitic zoonosis resulting from the infection with the hemoflagellate protozoan Trypanosoma cruzi, which can be transmitted to humans by blood-sucking triatomine insects, via blood transfusions, infected organ transplantation and/or vertical transmission (Gascon et al., 2007; Punukollu et al., 2007). American trypanosomiasis is widespread in the Americas, and endemic to Central and South America. It has been detected in 18 Latin American countries, affecting up to 20 million people from Mexico to Patagonia (Urbina et al., 2003).
Chagas disease may be quickly fatal, especially in children, or it may be carried asymptomatically for decades. Clinically, Chagas disease has a short-term acute and a long-term chronic phase. The short-term acute phase has very few clinical symptoms. However, chagasic cardiomyopathy is often the most prominent feature of the long-term chronic phase, which is usually accompanied by severe gastrointestinal and/or cardiac complications which result in permanent physical disability or death. Between 10-30% of infected people eventually develop severe cardiac or digestive chronic involvement as late manifestations of Chagas disease.
Despite the growing interest in the development of new drugs for treatment, the specific therapy for Chagas disease remains unsatisfactory in the prevalent chronic stages of Trypanosoma cruzi infection (Urbina et al., 2003). Current treatment of the acute phase is based on only two compounds: nitrofurans (nifurtimox) and nitro-imidazoles (benznidazole). However, these drugs have proven to be of limited efficacy during the acute as well as the chronic phase, most likely due to the presence of naturally resistant strains to these drugs. Moreover, treatment based on nitroheterocyclic compounds and nitroimid-azole derivatives frequently produce deleterious side effects in the patient, thereby limiting their use (Urbina et al., 2003; Benaim et al., 2006). Previously, it has been suggested that a combination of amiodarone and itraconazole may provide a rational therapeutic approach for the treatment of chronic Chagas disease (Paniz-Mondolfi et al. 2009), but this has not led to a pharmaceutical composition which can effectively treat Chagas disease without adverse side effects. Accordingly, a more effective and safer new treatment regimen is therefore still a desired goal for the treatment of Chagas disease.